It. In Italy the rivers were unwatched by the diminished peasantry; and,

like wild beasts from their lair when the hunters and dogs are afar, did

Tiber, Arno, and Po, rush upon and destroy the fertility of the plains.

Whole villages were carried away. Rome, and Florence, and Pisa were

overflowed, and their marble palaces, late mirrored in tranquil streams,

had their foundations shaken by their winter-gifted power. In Germany and

Russia the injury was still more momentous.

But frost would come at last, and with it a renewal of our lease of earth.

Frost would blunt the arrows of pestilence, and enchain the furious

elements; and the land would in spring throw off her garment of snow,

released from her menace of destruction. It was not until February that the

desired signs of winter appeared. For three days the snow fell, ice stopped

the current of the rivers, and the birds flew out from crackling branches

of the frost-whitened trees. On the fourth morning all vanished. A

south-west wind brought up rain--the sun came out, and mocking the usual

laws of nature, seemed even at this early season to burn with solsticial

force. It was no consolation, that with the first winds of March the lanes

were filled with violets, the fruit trees covered with blossoms, that the

corn sprung up, and the leaves came out, forced by the unseasonable heat.

We feared the balmy air--we feared the cloudless sky, the flower-covered

earth, and delightful woods, for we looked on the fabric of the universe no

longer as our dwelling, but our tomb, and the fragrant land smelled to the

apprehension of fear like a wide church-yard.

Pisando la tierra dura

de continuo el hombre esta

y cada passo que da

es sobre su sepultura.[1]

Yet notwithstanding these disadvantages winter was breathing time; and we

exerted ourselves to make the best of it. Plague might not revive with the

summer; but if it did, it should find us prepared. It is a part of man's

nature to adapt itself through habit even to pain and sorrow. Pestilence

had become a part of our future, our existence; it was to be guarded

against, like the flooding of rivers, the encroachments of ocean, or the

inclemency of the sky. After long suffering and bitter experience, some

panacea might be discovered; as it was, all that received infection died--

all however were not infected; and it became our part to fix deep the

foundations, and raise high the barrier between contagion and the sane; to

introduce such order as would conduce to the well-being of the survivors,

and as would preserve hope and some portion of happiness to those who were

spectators of the still renewed tragedy. Adrian had introduced systematic

modes of proceeding in the metropolis, which, while they were unable to

stop the progress of death, yet prevented other evils, vice and folly, from

rendering the awful fate of the hour still more tremendous. I wished to

imitate his example, but men are used to

--move all together, if they move at all,[2]

and I could find no means of leading the inhabitants of scattered

towns and villages, who forgot my words as soon as they heard them

not, and veered with every baffling wind, that might arise from an

apparent change of circumstance.

I adopted another plan. Those writers who have imagined a reign of peace

and happiness on earth, have generally described a rural country, where

each small township was directed by the elders and wise men. This was the

key of my design. Each village, however small, usually contains a leader,

one among themselves whom they venerate, whose advice they seek in

difficulty, and whose good opinion they chiefly value. I was immediately

drawn to make this observation by occurrences that presented themselves to

my personal experience.

In the village of Little Marlow an old woman ruled the community. She had

lived for some years in an alms-house, and on fine Sundays her threshold

was constantly beset by a crowd, seeking her advice and listening to her

admonitions. She had been a soldier's wife, and had seen the world;

infirmity, induced by fevers caught in unwholesome quarters, had come on

her before its time, and she seldom moved from her little cot. The plague

entered the village; and, while fright and grief deprived the inhabitants

of the little wisdom they possessed, old Martha stepped forward and said--

"Before now I have been in a town where there was the plague."--"And you

escaped?"--"No, but I recovered."--After this Martha was seated more

firmly than ever on the regal seat, elevated by reverence and love. She

entered the cottages of the sick; she relieved their wants with her own

hand; she betrayed no fear, and inspired all who saw her with some portion

of her own native courage. She attended the markets--she insisted upon

being supplied with food for those who were too poor to purchase it. She

shewed them how the well-being of each included the prosperity of all. She

would not permit the gardens to be neglected, nor the very flowers in the

cottage lattices to droop from want of care. Hope, she said, was better

than a doctor's prescription, and every thing that could sustain and

enliven the spirits, of more worth than drugs and mixtures.